Amazing Diary here. I left you a brief message on my feelings. I was in Kiev in Oct 1988. Daughters were on a Good Will Ballet tour from California. I still remember the 3 days in Kiev. The topic there, was something knowone talked about. Your diary reminds me of the Movie. The Pianist, which won the Oscar for Best Actor last yr.
Thanks so much for sharing this trip, I feel empty buildings and roads, the hardship for those who suffered and grateful that your photography and writting on this subject is here today...
It's so sad, and frightening really. So much of Russia has been left like this, slowly being reclaimed by nature. I was recently in central Siberia, and much of the landscape there is very similar, though for reasons less terrifying than the Chernobyl disaster. With jobs and money flowing to Moscow, and the bankrupting of the Soviet economy, much has been left abandoned or left unfinished in the Russian hinterland. Crumbling factories, industrial towns, and entire villages lay abandoned alongside incomplete public works and road bridges. It's a surreal country.
